THIS WEEKEND
Three strong performances by new releases, coupled with some impressive
holdovers, powered the box office to a record frame. Marching into first
place was the solid opening of Antz,
the first animated feature from DreamWorks, which grossed $17.2M over the
Friday-to-Sunday period according to final
studio figures. Colonizing 2,449 theaters, the computer-generated bug pic
walked away with a fantastic $7,021 average per site. Claiming the best
October opening ever (1994's Stargate
had held that record with $16.6M), Antz,
featuring the voices of Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, and Sylvester Stallone,
performed better than Fox's debut toon from last year, Anastasia.
That movie opened with $14.1M in 2,478 castles last November and finished
its run with a respectable $58.4M.

DreamWorks was able
to get Antz into
theaters ahead of originally scheduled allowing it to hit consumers several
weeks before Disney's computer-generated insect pic A
Bug's Life which opens at Thanksgiving.
The headstart gives Antz a
major advantage as it will have the family crowd all to itself for a full
month before the end-of-year bloodbath that finds Bugs,
Rugrats,
Babe II,
Jack Frost,
I'll Be Home For Christmas,
Prince of Egypt,
Mighty Joe Young
and The Wizard of Oz
reissue all attacking the same family audience in November and December.

Describing the film's
across-the-board appeal, Jim Tharp, head of distribution at DreamWorks,
reported that the opening weekend crowd for Antz
was split evenly between family and non-family
moviegoers and that the male/female ratio was 50/50 as well. Ticket sales
for Antz surged
a mighty 80% on Saturday compared to Friday.

Media analyst David
Davis of Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin tracks the film industry and
noted that similarly-themed movies have been released within months of
each other in the past and will probably continue in the future. He stated
that "usually the first film out of the gate has the advantage"
as in the lava movies Dante's Peak
and Volcano
from last year, and Tombstone
and Wyatt Earp
from 1993-94. However, Davis pointed to the comet pics Deep
Impact and Armageddon
as examples of when the second film to reach consumers grosses more with
both being successful overall.

What did Cuba Gooding
Jr. say to Robin Williams when they met in the afterlife? Show me the
money!! The former Mrs. Doubtfire
landed in second place over the weekend with the glossy drama What
Dreams May Come. The Polygram film, starring
the two Oscar winners, debuted with a heavenly $15.8M and a hot-as-hell
average of $6,268 per theater. Dreams,
which follows the journey of a man who dies and searches for his wife in
the afterlife, once again proved that Williams can draw a large crowd to
both dramas as well as his trademark comedies.

The powerful debut
of Dreams makes
it the third best October opening ever. For Polygram, What
Dreams May Come represented its biggest
debut to date surpassing the $14.3M launch of last fall's The
Game. Floating into 2,526 theaters, the
supernatural tearjerker became the widest October opening ever. With a
reported budget of about $85M, and an unconventional storyline, What
Dreams May Come was a risky endeavour
but so far it is paying off.

With Oscar finally
in hand, Williams easily enjoyed his best opening for a serious film. While
his previous dramas debuted in limited release and expanded nationwide
in subsequent weeks, Polygram blanketed the marketplace with Dreams
on the first weekend. Previous wide openings
for the actor's dramas include $10.3M for Good
Will Hunting, $8.3M for Awakenings,
$7.5M for Dead Poets Society,
and $7.1M for The Fisher King.
It should be noted that compared to Dreams,
Poets
and Awakenings
had higher opening averages of $10,976 and $6,479 respectively.

After dominating the
box office for two weeks, New Line's cash cow Rush
Hour slipped to third place amid tough
competition from newcomers and grossed $14.5M. Off by just 32%, the Jackie
Chan-Chris Tucker pic has kicked and punched its way to a cume of $84M
in only 17 days. Rush Hour is
now the sixth highest-grossing film from the New Line stable. For Chan,
Rush Hour has
already grossed about as much as his last five films combined. Collectively,
Rumble in the Bronx,
Supercop,
First Strike,
Operation Condor,
and Mr. Nice Guy
have grossed $86.3M at the domestic box office.

Paramount has had mixed
results with transforming skits from Saturday Night Live into feature-length
motion pictures, but A Night at the Roxbury
delivered well-needed good news. Taking
in $9.6M over the weekend, the comedy about two brothers who are club-hopping
fools opened better than other recent SNL-inspired films like Coneheads
and the forgettable It's Pat
and Stuart Saves His Family.
Though far from attracting the kinds of crowds that the Wayne's
World flicks did, Roxbury
enjoyed a solid debut helped by an extensive
promotional campaign.

The time was right
for a new comedy since There's Something
About Mary has monopolized the market
for over two months now. In fact, Roxbury's
launch was the best for a pure comedy since the Fox sleeper debuted in
July. Opening in 1,865 nitespots, Roxbury
averaged a groovin' $5,150 per location.

Rounding out the top
five was Robert De Niro's action thriller Ronin.
Despite glowing reviews from top critics, moviegoers were not as enticed
as it fell 43% collecting $7.2M. After ten days, the MGM/UA crime film
has heisted $23.9 and should top out at around $35-40M which would still
make it the second highest-grossing movie for the studio this year after
The Man in the Iron Mask's
$57M. Ronin's
overseas prospects still look promising given the film's international
cast and setting. With no more major releases in the pipeline for 1998,
MGM/UA can begin closing the books for the year and start preparing for
1999.

Sony's Urban
Legend fell just 36% to finish the frame
with $6.7M, raising its ten-day cume to $20.1M. The sophomore depreciation
was uncharacteristically low for a horror film since fans tend to rush
out on opening weekend to see them. By comparison, second weekend drops
for some recent frightfests include 48% for Halloween:
H20, 58% for Disturbing
Behavior, and 58% for Scream
2. With the next slasher pic still about
two weeks away, Urban Legend
should continue to scare up strong business and finish with about $35M.

There's Something
About Mary, as usual, enjoyed the smallest
decline in the top ten dipping just 23% to $3.4M. With an astonishing $158M
in the bank, Mary stands
as Fox's fifth highest-grossing film of the decade behind Independence
Day ($306M), Home
Alone ($286M), Mrs.
Doubtfire ($219M), and Home
Alone 2 ($173M).

The rest of the top
ten included One True Thing
with $2.7M, Saving Private Ryan
with $1.7M, and Simon Birch
which grossed $1.5M. Falling out of the top ten were Blade
now at $66M in its seventh week, Rounders
which is up to $21.6M in its fourth week, and Ever
After, now in its tenth week, which has
collected an impressive $62.6M in its glass slipper.

Debuting in selected
markets, Fox Searchlight's The Imposters
attracted a healthy $308,767 in 66 theaters for a $4,678 average. However,
Artisan's horror pic Strangeland
was not as lucky as it averaged a poor $1,185 per site with $373,288 in
315 cinemas.

In other box office
news, The Hollywood Reporter stated that September grosses totaled a new
high of $385.8M beating last year's previous record by an impressive 18.5%.
A record 82.3 million tickets were torn during the month giving the frame
a 15% boost in admissions over last year, and a gain of about 3% over the
E.T. year
of 1982 which had held the record until now. New Line's Rush
Hour led the frame with $68.4M in just
13 days, and was helped by strong summer holdovers There's
Something About Mary, Blade,
and Saving Private Ryan.

Compared to projections,
Antz opened
extremely close to my $17M forecast while What
Dreams May Come and A
Night at the Roxbury opened stronger than
my projections of $12M and $6M respectively.

Take this week's NEW
Reader Survey on Star
Wars Episode 1 : The Phantom Menace. In
last week's survey, readers were asked whether Antz
or A Bug's Life would
gross more at the domestic box office. Of 1,456 responses, the voting was
even with 50.4% saying A Bug's Life and
49.6% choosing Antz.

Be sure to read the
Weekly Rewind column which reviews the films
of Robin Williams. Wednesday's new Rewind column will examine the biggest
October openings of this decade. For reviews of Antz
and What
Dreams May Come visit Chief's
Movie Review Page. For a complete look at the summer box office, read
the Box Office
Guru Summer Wrapup which analyzes
the record-breaking season with projected final grosses and plenty of data.

The top ten films grossed
a record $80.3M which was up 42% from last year when Kiss
the Girls opened at number one with $13.2M,
and up a hefty 82% from 1996 when The First
Wives Club spent its third weekend at
the top with $11M. The total for the top ten was the best since the weekend
of August 7th and tops among any frames in September or October ever.

Be sure to check in
again on Thursday for a complete summary of next weekend's activity
when Eddie Murphy goes for the hat trick with Holy
Man.

This column is updated three times each week
: Thursday (upcoming weekend's summary),
Sunday (post-weekend analysis with
estimates), and Monday night (actuals).
Source : EDI, Exhibitor Relations. Opinions expressed in this column are
those solely of the author.